Day: April 29, 2004

Current Affairs Religion

Left Behind

islamoyankee

I read the book Left Behind a few months ago, and was quite taken by it. I’m intrigued by how other people view their own faiths, and theological texts are often not the best way to do so; I much prefer things like literature or autobiography, things that give me a greater sense of the lived tradition. I was doing some research on the No Child Left Behind Act, and something occurred to me. According the Left Behind series children will experience the Rapture for two reasons, they have not consciously sinned and they are ignorant of the world. The…

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Travel

Silk Road

islamoyankee

The Silk Road was a very cool trade route that joined civilizations and cultures. It now seems it’s being revived. Aside from the physical reconstruction, you can see off to the side under “voices in our heads” a CD called “Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet,” put out by the Silk Road Project. They are committed to using the cultural synthesis that defined the Silk Road to help bring people closer together. They were part of the Folklife Festival at the Smithsonian in DC in 2002. The really nice thing is that they list the major funder and creative partner…

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Current Affairs Television

Adoption Game

islamoyankee

I don’t know what’s going on at 20/20, and I’m surprised at Barbara Walters for doing an adoption game style promotion for a news piece. I’m shocked the challenge is on legal grounds to the theft of an idea instead of outrage that such advertising, and perhaps such games, are permissible.

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Current Affairs Weblogs

Here’s the Outrage

islamoyankee

I’m wondering where the outrage is, and finally I see that Muslims are offended by the desecration of holy sites by other Muslims, if not by Muslim-on-Muslim violence. I’m glad to see the Shi’ah of Najaf are rising up against those who would take their (Najafi) Islam and use it for their own (non-Najafi) purposes. Imam Ali (PBUH) was the son-in-law and cousin of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). He is regarded by the Shi’ah as being the heir to both temporal and spiritual authority of the Islamic community. He was martyred because he tried to peacefully end the first civil war…

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Current Affairs Film Web/Tech

What do these things have in common?

islamoyankee

What do the movies The Passion of Christ and American Pie have in common? I saw a report on CNN the other day about a new DVD player that edits movies on the fly to remove objectionable material. The story was recently posted on CNN.com. I thought it was worth mentioning because they interviewed a spokesperson for the company, and he said something that caught my attention, but that didn’t make it into the print story. When the violence or language is integral to the story, it won’t be edited. So The Passion and American Pie have integrated the objectionable…

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